In a Feb. 13 file photo a contractor for the Cabot Oil & Gas collects a water sample from a resident's home in Dimock, Pa. / Matt Rourke / AP File Photo

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BINGHAMTON — The results are in: Nothing indicates natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania has affected the city’s water supply.

Following a request by Binghamton Mayor Matthew T. Ryan for special testing, the city recently received laboratory data showing no discernible effects on the city’s public water supply from hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in Pennsylvania.

“Right now, there’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about,” Ryan said of the results. The city’s Water and Sewer Department will continue the tests, he added, “so they can continue to monitor and see if there’s any changes.”

The concerns stem from a W-shaped portion of the Susquehanna River that flows through northern Pennsylvania for 15 miles before re-entering New York state and continuing west to the City of Binghamton. There are more than 100 active natural gas wells in a six-township area of Susquehanna County surrounding the river, although many have not been hydraulically fractured and only one well pad is within a mile of the waterway.

Five chemical compounds associated with hydrofracking were not present at detectable levels in the city’s water supply, the test results show. A fifth was detectable, but at levels below the national average for public water supplies.

Ryan said the city will continue the testing regimen to establish a baseline of data in case there are any changes, and that he spoke recently with Joseph Martens, commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, about whether the state should become involved.

“He (Martens) said they were aware of those complaints and that he was going to get me some information about what they plan to do, if anything, about it,” said Ryan, a prominent critic of hydrofracking in New York. “Hopefully they will do something to check out the situation and figure out if there is a problem there."

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The four compounds not present at detectable levels in the city’s surface or well water sources were butane, ethane, propane and methane, according to a test report dated Oct. 11 from Benchmark Analytics, Inc., of Sayre, Pa.

Strontium, a naturally occurring element in shale deposits, was detected, although not at levels that would raise concern.

Test results at Binghamton’s surface water intake — about two-thirds of a mile east of Rock Bottom Dam on the Susquehanna River — showed strontium was present at 0.079 milligrams per liter. A test of the city’s water well detected strontium at a concentration of 0.2 milligrams per liter.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the average strontium concentration in public water supplies is 1.1 milligrams per liter in surface water, and 0.81 milligrams per liter in groundwater.

'Not a major expense'

The most recent line of testing falls in line with previous data on Binghamton’s public water supply, which is constantly monitored by a computerized system and subjected to dozens of laboratory tests each month under state requirements.

Annual water quality reports produced by the city show no notable increase in contaminants since natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale gained a major foothold in Susquehanna County in 2009.

A spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has said that the agency hasn’t received any complaints or investigated any reports of river pollution connected to drilling.

Additionally, data collected by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission — a federal-state compact agency that monitors water conditions across a four-state area — has shown no noticeable changes to water quality at testing points in Kirkwood and Binghamton.

“It seems that Matt Ryan does a wonderful job of wasting the Binghamton taxpayers’ money,” said John Krohn, spokesman for the industry-funded group Energy In Depth. “It’s not surprising that this latest round of water tests shows the same results of the city’s water testing over the past six years — that Marcellus Shale development has not impacted the Susquehanna River negatively, and in turn hasn’t impacted the City of Binghamton’s water supply.”

Ryan said in an interview this week that the laboratory testing is “not a major expense for the city,” although he could not immediately provide the exact costs of the tests.

However, Wes Gillingham, program director for the environmental group Catskill Mountainkeeper, said the city is wise to monitor its water supply.

“Almost every place that they are doing the drilling, there are issues that come up — either from human error (or) technical failure — and there’s a lot more problems out there than we know about because of non-disclosure agreements,” he said. “Putting in the effort to find out what is getting into the water course is a very smart idea.”